


1,000 Times

by sullenaquarian



Category: Palm Springs (2020)
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, missing scenes from missing time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullenaquarian/pseuds/sullenaquarian
Summary: The times before Sarah entered the cave.
Relationships: Nyles/Sarah Wilder
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	1,000 Times

_“We’ve fucked, like, a thousand times”_

Nyles doesn’t really notice Sarah the first few dozen loops. He half-listens to her uncomfortable and rambling maid of honor speech, but mostly he’s just hoping that tonight will be the loop where he doesn’t catch Misty cheating on him with Trevor. 

That never changes, though. In every universe, Trevor lifts Missy onto the sink. And finally Nyles gives up hoping and starts looking for a distraction.

The bartender was the first. Then he met Darla, when he ran into the bar after barely escaping one of Roy’s attempts to kill him. Jerry followed soon after that. 

But then there was Sarah. He finally starts to really pay attention to her—how she never ventures near the dance floor, how she spends almost the entire night nursing a glass of red wine, how she barely smiles when her dad comes by to see how she’s doing. He makes a mental note that tomorrow/today, he’ll try to cheer her up.

So the next loop, Nyles commandeers the microphone and gives his first toast. It doesn’t go great—he didn’t write anything in advance, and his joke about the bride and groom looking alike doesn’t garner a single chuckle—but he does see Sarah smiling a little more broadly afterwards.

He works a little harder, and the next time he gives that speech—maybe a half-dozen loops later--, Sarah comes over to him on the dance floor. 

“Thank you for sparing me from giving a speech,” she tells him. “I love my sister, but I don’t have anything to say.”

Nyles bows and reaches out his hand. “You’re welcome, madam. I’m Nyles.”

“Misty’s boyfriend, right?”

“The very one. Hey, you want to get a drink?”

Sarah raises an eyebrow. “Won’t Misty mind?”

Nyles chuckles darkly. “Believe me, she won’t notice.”

Nyles charms the bartender into giving them an unopened bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He and Sarah sneak over to the pool and look out onto the desert sky as they pass the bottle back and forth.

“Do you ever feel totally alone?” she suddenly asks, swirling the dregs of whiskey at the bottom of her glass.

Nyles nods. “All the fucking time. Even though I’ve been dating Misty for over a year, but I think that’s running its course. She’s wearing fucking face gems. Who does that? And no offense, but no one in your family can be bothered to remember my name, even though I was at the engagement party, bachelor party, and rehearsal dinner.”

“No offense taken. If it wasn’t for Facetime, I think they’d forget what I look like. I only make it out from Austin for Christmas and my dad’s birthday.” She sighs and sets her glass on the ground, turning to look at Nyles.

“Kiss me,” she demands.

“But Misty—” Nyles weakly responds.

“Wears fucking face gems. Kiss me,” she repeats.

Nyles pulls her into his lap and runs his hands down her back as she grinds into him. The sound of blood rushing down from his head and into parts below overwhelms the music still playing from the reception. He feels Sarah’s hands trying to undo his swim trunks. 

“Not here—someone could see us,” he cautions.

“My car, then. I just need to forget everything right now.”

“Not your room?”

“NO.” Sarah is strangely insistent about that. 

Nyles shrugs and follows Sarah to her car. She’s a little baffled when he reveals the underwear under his trunks. The whole thing is quick, awkward, and yet very hot. 

When Nyles wakes up, there’s a little pang when he hears Misty’s voice instead of Sarah.

Every other person Nyles has hooked up with has been a one-time-only event, to scratch that particular itch. But Sarah—he wants that again. Even though it’ll only be for an hour or two at the reception—for some reason, she’s never around in the morning—he relishes the time he gets to spend with her. Sometimes they don’t even fuck, instead just sitting quietly with their drinks. 

Mostly, though, it’s sex. Sometimes in her car, sometimes out in the desert, a few times even near the cave. Sarah isn’t as interested in getting to know Nyles. She’s just looking for a distraction from her family, and he’s more than willing to oblige.

“Your hair smells really nice,” he says one time, as she curls into his chest. 

“Orchard Explosion by Fornier,” she murmurs. “A gift from Tala.”

Nyles stores that information away. Who knows, maybe one day he’ll be able to use it.

He loses track of how many times he and Sarah have sex. Maybe it’s a thousand times, maybe a couple hundred, maybe only a few dozen. He doesn’t always give that toast, and she doesn’t always respond when he does. Sometimes when he catches Misty and Trevor, he just wanders right to the desert without talking to anyone. 

But when it does happen, and when he learns even the tiniest thing about Sarah—her middle name, or the name of her childhood cat, or the high school geometry teacher she hated—he wishes that she could remember anything about him. Nyles doesn’t realize it at the time, but he was already halfway to falling in love with Sarah before she followed him into the cave. 

And now, now they’re yelling at each other on the side of the road, and he’s revealing the truth he had hidden from her for all this time. She’s running into the middle of the road, and she’s gone. 

Sarah’s gone for a long, long time. Nyles doesn’t sleep with anyone else, doesn’t bother to try again with Misty. No one can replace her. He wanders to the cave from time to time, hoping to spot her. He thinks he sees her once, but it’s just his shadow. He visits Roy.

He berates himself constantly for not telling her the truth about their history. He didn’t want Sarah feeling they were on unequal footing. And honestly, those earlier nights with Sarah, they were nothing compared to what they had now—while Nyles had learned bits and pieces about her back then, he hadn’t learned who Sarah really was. He hadn’t learned about how she laughed when she watched him dance, how she bit her lip when she was concentrating, how the scent of Orchard Explosion would sometimes linger in his nose even after they said their goodnights. But he should have told her, because he loves her, and she left and he’ll never get to tell her. 

Finally, she returns, bursting with an idea so crazy it might work. Nyles doesn’t want to leave, but he doesn’t want to lose her. But ultimately, what he wants is a chance, however slim, to wake up beside her. 

The cave shakes and cracks as the bomb explodes. They’re holding each other tightly as rocks tumble around them. Finally, silence. 

Nyles looks around.

“Well, I guess we aren’t dead?” he says. “Wanna go outside?”

They exit the cave and look around. It’s still dark. Spuds has left. 

“How will we know if this worked?” Sarah asks. 

Nyles shrugs. “We won’t until morning, I guess. Let’s grab our bags and head to that house. I broke up with Misty this morning and don’t want to be around when she returns.”

At the house, they fall asleep on a lounge chair, too tired to do anything else. Nyles wakes up alone and a little confused. He’s not in his and Misty’s room anymore, but where is Sarah?

He hears a car engine shut off. Sarah is walking up toward him, carrying a Starbucks tray and a newspaper.

“Check out the date! November 10!”

She puts the tray down and they start dancing like idiots. 

The next morning, in Nyles’ bedroom, with Fred barking outside, they wake up together. For a thousand times and thousands of times after.


End file.
